A popular marketing technique is to provide free product samples to potential customers to entice the customers to buy the product. The free sample can be provided to the customer by an employee of, for example, a grocery store during regular working hours while the customer is otherwise shopping for other products. The store employee can then sell the customer the product by pointing the customer to the area of the store where that product is sold, typically close to where the free sample is provided. This marketing tool is especially popular for products that have only recently entered the market or where potential customers are not likely to have sampled the product through conventional means.
Free samples can also be dispensed through automated means, as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/100,595. For example, a product dispensation device can dispense a free sample when a user scans a barcode, instructs the dispensation device through a smart phone application, or through any other manner of identification.
Automated product dispensation devices strive to deliver one product at a time. To accomplish this, the dispensation devices operate at parameters thought to achieve maximum efficiency. For example, the device may include rotating augers that rotate at a specific speed that delivers certain products in a seriatim fashion. However, these parameters are typically normalized for all products and do not take into account the different geometry or weight of the products being dispensed. Therefore, a smaller product and a larger product would currently be subject to the same operation parameters. This can cause problems during the dispensing of the products. For example, since the larger product should have a slower auger speed compared to the slower product, by using the same parameters as used with the smaller product, multiple larger products may be dispensed at one time, instead of just one of the larger products. Therefore, there exists a need to optimize different parameters of a product dispending device to ensure optimized output is achieved for different type of products.